FIFA Hires Ruggie to Review Business Practices

John Ruggie speaks onstage during the United Nations Global Compact 15TH Anniversary Celebration in New York in June.

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In an effort to shore up its bona fides on the human rights front with upcoming tournaments in Russia and Qatar on its schedule, soccer’s world governing body has hired a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School to review and report on the organization’s business practices.

John Ruggie, an author of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which provides an outline of international standards for multinational businesses, will study FIFA’s affiliations and issue a public report in March, the organization announced Monday.

In an interview, Ruggie said he had written a letter to FIFA president Sepp Blatter ahead of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil noting the importance of human rights for an organization with the global reach that FIFA enjoys. He suggested FIFA could do better. He received a polite reply at the time but then nothing more until this summer, when Blatter invited him to the organization’s Zurich headquarters to discuss the matter.

“He had hopes that he would be able to leave a reformed FIFA as his legacy,” Ruggie said of Blatter.

FIFA has been swirling in controversy since May, when U.S. prosecutors unsealed the indictments of 14 current and former soccer officials and executives on racketeering charges. It unsealed the indictments of another 16 officials earlier this month. Blatter announced in June he would step down as president and called for a special election to name his successor.

In October FIFA provisionally suspended Blatter while it investigated, among other alleged improprieties, a 2011 payment of $2 million he authorized to Michel Platini, president of Europe’s soccer confederation. Both men have said the payment was for consulting work Platini did beginning in 1998, but the payment was not made until years later, near the time when Platini decided not to challenge Blatter for FIFA’s presidency.

“This collaboration is another important step in our ongoing reform process,” acting FIFA President Issa Hayatou said in a statement Monday. “Football and FIFA have an important role to play in this field; respect for human rights has to be at the core of our organization and our sport.”

Ruggie said ideally the human rights standards would have been clear during the bid process that awarded the World Cup to Russia in 2018 and Qatar in 2022.

“The purpose of this exercise is to make sure FIFA does not contribute to human rights abuses through its own activities and events,” he said. “It doesn’t call on FIFA to reform countries it works in.”

Ruggie is aware of the labor issues in Qatar, where migrant workers have limited rights and have had to seek the permission of their employers to leave the country. He said he negotiated with FIFA to ensure his report will be released publicly by Harvard and not remain confidential, like other reports FIFA has ordered. He plans to outline what FIFA needs to do in Qatar to conform with international human rights standards.

“My final report will have a list of criteria that must be met by any enterprise that claims to be embedding the guiding principles,” he said.